Good ol’ Liberty U., that bastion of narrowmindedness – you wouldn’t expect anything other than to hear that the school has formally revoked its recognition of the campus Democratic Party club, and will subject Liberty U. Democrats who still consider themselves Liberty U. Democrats to possible expulsion. Whaddya say we do the same thing to Liberty U.?

First to the Democratic Party issue. “The Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine (supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the ‘LGBT’ agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc.),” read an e-mail from Mark Hine, the vice president of student affairs at Liberty, to Brian Diaz, the president of the Liberty University Democratic Party organization.

And so, according to the e-mail, the club must stop using the university’s name as part of its name, can no longer hold meetings on campus and cannot advertise its events to fellow students. Violators of the edict from on high are subject to reprimands under the school’s Liberty Way conduct code and could face expulsion.

“We are in no way attempting to stifle free speech,” Hine told the Lynchburg News and Advance, obviously oblivious to the concept of hypocrisy as he spoke.

He told the paper that the university could not sanction a club that supported Democratic candidates, which brings up a question from me. How can we Virginia taxpayers continue to support with our tax dollars a university that doesn’t follow the basic tenets of free speech and freedom of expression?

Now to what we the people need to say to Liberty U. Liberty U., as a private university in Virginia, participates in the Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant program. About 20 percent of Liberty students are eligible for the grants, which are valued in the area of $2,000 a year, meaning they’re not insubstantial to the students or to the school.

It’s clear that the Liberty U. platform is contrary to the mission of the TAG program and the taxpayers of Virginia for the use of their higher-education dollars, which isn’t to advance the cause of the Democratic Party or Republican Party or the right-to-life movement or the choice movement or any party or movement or ideology or line of thought but to promote learning and growth and self-improvement across the spectrums.

It’s time we send this message loud and clear.

– Column by Chris Graham

Team of Destiny: Inside UVA Basketball's improbable run

Team of Destiny: Inside Virginia Basketball’s Run to the 2019 National Championship, by Jerry Ratcliffe and Chris Graham, is available for $25. The book, with additional reporting by Zach Pereles, Scott Ratcliffe and Scott German, will take you from the aftermath of the stunning first-round loss to UMBC in 2018, and how coach Tony Bennett and his team used that loss as the source of strength, through to the ACC regular-season championship, the run to the Final Four, and the thrilling overtime win over Texas Tech to win the 2019 national title, the first in school history.

Subscribe

Augusta Free Press content is available for free, as it has been since 2002, save for a disastrous one-month experiment at putting some content behind a pay wall back in 2009. (We won’t ever try that again. Almost killed us!) That said, it’s free to read, but it still costs us money to produce. The site is updated several times a day, every day, 365 days a year, 366 days on the leap year. (Stuff still happens on Christmas Day, is what we’re saying there.) AFP does well in drawing advertisers, but who couldn’t use an additional source of revenue? From time to time, readers ask us how they can support us, and we usually say, keep reading. Now we’re saying, you can drop us a few bucks, if you’re so inclined.

Subscribe

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 106,970 other subscribers

Email Address

Augusta Free Press launched in 2002. The site serves as a portal into life in the Shenandoah Valley and Central Virginia – in a region encompassing Augusta County, Albemarle County and Nelson County and the cities of Charlottesville, Staunton and Waynesboro, at the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway, Skyline Drive, Shenandoah National Park and the Appalachian Trail.